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When I first adopted my three cats Frankie, Joy and Olive, I was prepared for playtime, cuddles and upgrading my phone storage to have room for all of the photos I’d take of them. I was not as prepared for the sheer amount of fur three cats produced simply by existing. Since my cats have both light and dark hair, it’s not easy to hide their fur.
At times, it would be easier to leave my condo coated in a layer of cat fur at all times – but with the right tools, tidying up becomes much easier. It turns out, depending on the fabric makeup of your furniture and clothing, you’ll need a variety of tools to keep your home spotless. To find the very best hair removal tools, I looked into what was on the market and tried a variety of methods to see which ones worked the most efficiently. I also consulted a cleaning expert and cat behavioralist to find out just what works most purrfectly for our homes with furry friends.
I’m a reviewer with experience evaluating everything from handbags and nail polish systems to reality TV shows. I share very close quarters (850 sq ft to be exact) with the three kittens I adopted in August 2024. Frankie and Joy are domestic shorthairs, and Olive is a domestic medium hair. They all shed an average amount, but since there are three of them, even that can feel overwhelming. Despite this, I am often told by visitors that my home does not look or smell like three cats live within its walls. In addition to trying these products out myself, I solicited the advice of a fellow cat owner and interviewed a cleaning expert and a cat expert.
After looking into the most popular cat hair removal tools on the market, I chose 18 of the most highly rated and commonly used methods currently available. In order to determine which were worth it, I used a variety of methods to compare these tools.
I tried each tool on a variety of fabrics (velvet, cotton, polyester, carpet and linen) to determine how it performed on different textures.
I used each device over a large surface area and considered how long it took me to remove cat hair from the selected item.
I considered how much work it was to use each tool and weighed the level of effort exerted against the amount of cat hair removed.
Of all of the cat hair removal items I tested, the Black & Decker pet hair remover is the fastest and most efficient at cleaning cat hair from linens and furniture. This product bears a strong resemblance to the Chom Chom and at a fraction of the cost, it works just as well. It uses static electricity to pick up pet hair, making it easy to use on larger furniture items such as a couch or blanket. Once you’re done, press the button on top of the handle and lift up the lid – the pet hair collects in the roller’s chamber for easy cleanup. This remover is able to pick up the stray hairs that can get stuck between the woven fabric of my chenille arm chairs.
It’s a shame that … it requires substantial effort and motion to use, and it doesn’t work as well on smaller surfaces such as cat trees or cat beds. It does work on clothes well enough, but the large surface area it covers makes it more awkward to use than something like a lint roller.
The pet hair removal glove is a mitt that slides over your hand. To use it, just rub your hand back and forth on your fabric of choice and watch as all the hair on your bed disappears into strips that you then remove from the mitt itself. Much like the Black and Decker Pet Hair Remover, this product uses static electricity to gather together fur. It’s particularly helpful when removing cat hair from large surface areas like my velvet coach and blankets. Since my cats have light and dark fur, it’s hard to hide their hair anywhere in my home, but especially on my black dining room chairs, where Olive likes to nap. This glove allows me to quickly remove hair from that surface whenever I notice it.
It’s a shame that … it really can’t be used on my cotton shirts or woven fabrics. When I tried it on a cotton T-shirt, I found far too many stray hairs left behind. The mitt also seems to leave a few more stray hairs behind than the Black and Decker Pet Hair Remover. Some reviews say that using the glove is harder if you have small hands, but my hands are pretty average in size and I have had no issues using it.
